FRIDAY FLASHBACK: 25 YEARS AGO

Our Mountain Bike Action cover from November of 1999 showed cross-country star Alison Dunlap (top right) and downhill star Shaums March (bottom left) in action at the races.

In the center photo we showed ( left to right) MBA test rider Kathy Sessler, MBA’s assistant editor Mike Cushionbury, and one of Kathy’s friends, all checking out a bike’s vital signs.

Back then, bike designers were doing everything they could to try to make their bikes faster than those of their competitors.

Just for fun, we had Mike Cushionshbury dress up like a doctor, examining a bike on an operating table with the help of two nurses. Kathy Sessler’s friend was a nurse, and she supplied the medical uniforms for the photo. MBA photographer John Ker did everything he could to make the MBA studio look like it was an operating room.

Kathy Sessler had started racing cross-country in 1989, but later switched to racing downhill and moved up to the pro ranks. She won three national titles in the Veteran Women’s Downhill class. She also won the silver medal in the Veteran Women’s class at the 1992 World Championships, and the bronze medal in the class at the 1994 Worlds.

Kathly would later go on to take on the job of being the downhill team manager for Santa Cruz—working with riders like Steve Peat, Greg Minnaar, Luca Shaw and Loris Vergier—traveling to the UCI World Cup and World Championship races for close to 20 years.

We don’t know how well our November 1999 issue sold (our publisher always kept track of that kind of information, but the editors usually didn’t hear too much about that info). Still, it’s one issue that definitely stood out from the other Mountain Bike Action issues that year.